ConFoo Montreal 2026: Call for Papers

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Rain
5 years ago
It should be noted that typed properties internally are never initialized to a default null. Unless of course you initialize them to null yourself. That's why you will always going to encounter this error if you try to access them before initialization.

**Typed property foo::$bar must not be accessed before initialization**

<?php
class User
{
public
$id;
public
string $name; // Typed property (Uninitialized)
public ?string $age = null; // Typed property (Initialized)
}

$user = new User;
var_dump(is_null($user->id)); // bool(true)
var_dump(is_null($user->name)); // PHP Fatal error: Typed property User::$name must not be accessed before initialization
var_dump(is_null($user->age));// bool(true)
?>

Another thing worth noting is that it's not possible to initialize a property of type object to anything other than null. Since the evaluation of properties happens at compile-time and object instantiation happens at runtime. One last thing, callable type is not supported due to its context-dependent behavior.

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